


should have worshipped her sooner

by andromedaries



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: 74th Hunger Games, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Non-Graphic Smut, Oral Sex, Schmoop, soft kissy missionary sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromedaries/pseuds/andromedaries
Summary: the night they learn there can be two winners of the 74th hunger games is much happier than the nights that usually bring them together(just some sappy, non-angsty, not-too-explicit soft smut for these trying times)
Relationships: Haymitch Abernathy/Effie Trinket
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	should have worshipped her sooner

**Author's Note:**

> so this is like... Smut Lite? i've never attempted anything smutty before so i'm sure the pacing is disastrous, but every time i read something smutty there's at least one moment where a detail is tmi to me and it kills the mood, so i decided to be the super zoomed-out pg-13 smut i wish to see in the world.  
> i suppose it might be a little ooc depending on how you hc their relationship at this point in the series, but personally i imagine they're friends, maybe in denial about having slightly more than friendly feelings, and only ever hook up when they're both a mess because their tributes have just died. and i'm sure in canon they were probably stressing about peeta's blood poisoning etc at this point but there's plenty of angst about these two out there without my help and i wanted to write them having a rare occasion to forget all the horrible stuff and just enjoy a night together

This is nothing like it usually is. Most years when they end up doing this it's lost and desperate and tempestuous, when another cruelly short life has been choked off too suddenly and this is the only damn thing that makes any sense at all. Most nights that this happens, he's headed straight for the bottom of a cracked whisky bottle and she's halfway to meeting him there. But tonight is nothing like it usually is. Tonight instead of liquor their lips taste like champagne. Tonight the sounds between kisses sound less like stifled sobs and more like breathless laughs. He could bring both his kids home this year. He barely dares to believe it. It's been so long since he's dared to believe in anything.

He's pretty sure he kicked over a champagne glass as he scooped her up off the couch to carry her to bed, but he doesn't stop to check - just lays her down gently and climbs over her to lean in close and keep kissing her neck while she starts taking hairpins out of her wig. The pins clattering onto the nightstand sound like associations that burn up his blood with anticipation. His mouth finds its way back to her mouth again, and his hands slide back to find first the hem of her shirt, then the impossibly smooth skin of her back. She abandons the hairpins in favor of the buttons of his shirt and nips lightly at his bottom lip, barely suggesting at how hard she usually bites, and how bruisingly his fingers usually dig into her hipbones. Usually it's what they need. But tonight he will be gentle with her, this strange incomprehensible angel sent to guide him through the neverending hellscape of the Games. 

He starts on the buttons of her shirt as she pushes his off his shoulders, and kisses down her neck and collarbone and sternum as the buttons come undone. "So beautiful, Effie," he mumbles into her skin as his warm hands slide up her back again. When she untangles her hands from his hair to fumble for his belt buckle, he helps her get his pants the rest of the way off and lets them fall to the floor beside the bed. He finds the buttons of her skirt, and she lifts her hips to let him slide it off. His breath catches when he sees the pretty little scrap of lacy red Capitol silk she has on under it. He has to sit back on his heels for a moment just to look at her, almost reverently. She finally reaches up to pull her unpinned wig off and ruffles her fingers through her hair, fluffing up the short strawberry blond curls that have been flattened under the wig all day and smiling shyly at him. He'd never know why she was so self conscious of her natural hair, but it felt warm in his chest to know he was one of the few people she trusted with it. "So beautiful," he says again.

He runs his hands up her calves and back down again and, on an impulse, picks up one tiny foot and kisses it. Her laugh is surprised but not displeased, somewhere between tickled and turned on by the feeling of his lips moving on the arch of her foot. They'd never done this in particular, but he'd noticed before that she had cute little bitty feet, and he thought they deserved some kisses after all the torture they endured from the crazy high heels she was always wearing. He licks one of her nail-polished toes playfully and she laughs again, and he can't help but laugh too. She's just too damn cute. 

He sets her foot back down and bends to kiss his way back up her calf and the bend of her knee, achingly slowly. He doesn't want to miss a single inch of her beautiful skin. By the time he's reached the inside of her thigh, her breathing has already started to get shaky. They didn't usually spare the time to tease each other much, but watching her like this, he's starting to think maybe they should more often. She shivers magnificently as his blunt nails drag down the backs of her legs and his mouth marks the perfect creamy skin of her thighs with blooming purple bruises. Her hands twist into his hair again when his mouth finds the tendon in the crease of her thigh, and when he says against her skin to pull harder if she wants, the flex of her fingers and the growl in her throat send a hot rush of his blood flooding down through him. His fingers bite into her hipbones as he nuzzles at her through the silk and she lets a gasp slip out, fingers tightening in his hair. He stops a moment to look up at her, all closed eyes and bitten lip and tangled hair, and wonders what he ever did to deserve a second thought from this strange, kind, irritating, beautiful creature. 

She looks up to see why he stopped, and his eyes burn back into hers. In one swift motion he grabs her by the hips, shoulders under her legs, and drags her whole body back toward him, still holding her eyes. 

No more teasing now. 

Finally, endlessly, he noses his way around those lacy little knickers to lose himself in the soft little gasping _ah'_ s breaking off in her throat and the bite of her sharp nails through his hair, the arch in her back and the curl in her toes, till she's shaking apart and coming undone under him, and finally a choked-off sound makes him look up to see her biting the back of her hand. She was unbearably beautiful like this. It stole all the words from his mind, painting over them in broad swathes of sensation and emotion that felt too big for his battered heart.

After a few more moments, her teeth unclench slowly. "You don't have to keep quiet, you know," he says, voice ragged. "You sound as beautiful as you look."

Her eyes stay closed, and she makes the muscles arching her back relax with a shaky exhale. "I know," she whispers. She pulls him up close to her so she can say right against his ear, "just a bit self-conscious of our audience. I remember you saying all these rooms are bugged."

It had completely slipped his mind. She was right, of course, but he didn't figure it mattered too much. Very few people would care if an escort was bedding a washed-up old mentor, and he figured most people probably assumed he and Effie were a bit more than business partners anyway.

She slides a hand down between them, palm warm and pressure aching. "Your turn?"

"Mph. You want to?"

"Yes," she breathes, hands sliding around to his back and teasing at the waistband of his shorts. She allows her sharp little iridescent-painted fingernails a playful little bite down into his ass and smiles at him devilishly when his eyes open wider.

"Claws out tonight?" he asks, rolling his hips down against her.

"Maybe," she answers with a fake-innocent flutter of eyelashes that makes him laugh. Her nails find his waistband again. "Off?" she whispers, and he nods, throat suddenly too tight with anticipation to speak. His shorts find the floor next to his pants and and she lets one bent knee fall open to let him in, and before long the room fills with a litany of gasps and sighs that most certainly gives them away to whoever's listening to the bugs if they hadn't been figured out already. Neither of them cares. Hell, give em a good show if they want to listen. Victors' bedrooms in the tribute center are visited by sponsors, hookers, other victors, total strangers, why not escorts? Their kids might actually come home this year. They had every right to share that celebration.

The morning light finds them still comfortably entwined beneath the rumpled covers. He wakes up before she does, and notices with mild surprise that she's slept with her hair uncovered. Most times - every time, probably - that they'd been together, she'd tied on a scarf or bonnet of some sort as soon as they were both spent. He runs his fingers through her hair gently to wake her up. 

"Good morning, sweetheart," he says, kissing the tip of her nose. "We should go check on the kids."


End file.
